Monday, October 22, 2007

In preparation for the Forum's October X and Halloween House Party, I've been trying to "see" my MC's more clearly. Huge issues with Anna - Carly's best friend. I'm trying to make her stay a short, thin, italian with cropped hair. She, however, WANTS to be a short, big-breasted, full-bodied black woman. (see "Lula" from Janet Evanovich's Plum series)

I can't get her to conform to what I would like her to be. So, the question is how do I write her without copying another author's character? I'm fairly certain that the outspoken, big-boobed black best friend has been done well enough that my measly writing won't add anything of value.

Sigh. Then we have Carly. One of the twins that the story is all about. She doesn't have her own voice. She has MINE. I need to figure out how to fix this.

So, here's what I've done this month: puttered around with chunk writing; posted a half-assed October X and while I received great feedback, I'm still lost as to how to fix it; posted character descriptions for the House Party that I'm not very confident about; started writing Carly and Anna's entrance to the House Party without knowing who will be there or how they get there.

Yay, me.

Posted by
Tara Parker

2
comments:

In my experience, if a character says she's a short, heavy black woman, she probably is.(G) If you sat down with a blank sheet of paper and wrote down everything you know about her, maybe you'd find out that she's not much like Lulu after all? There's lots of room to invent her.

Sounds like you're a little down right now. Keep writing. This stuff will sort itself out.

As you write, the characters will all become more clear to you. I always find it easiest to allow them to tell me who they are. As for imitation...as long as your characters flow from your imagination, everyone will see the difference.